Update #1

As I sit here on the couch, rendered utterly useless by sickness and medication, I figured now would be as good as time as any to update the world on what we've been up to since the end of October. I know.  Feel free to patronize, but we've been busy! So here's the first post in a series of updating posts, beginning in November!

november 21:

We had the Military Ball for both Air Force ROTC (me) and the Army ROTC.  It was a fun night of dancing and dressing up and fun for all. I swear, I'm not as pasty as this picture makes me look.

Although hubby ended up getting injured (he hurt his knee dancing...haha...old fogey), we had a great time.  See?

We went out to dinner with a few friends beforehand to Olive Garden, and then went to the dance.  It still seems weird to me that college has dances, but oh well, it was fun!

thanksgiving:

Last year, we weren't able to come down for Thanksgiving because we were working, so this year we made a point of it. I didn't get any pictures from the hub's side of the family but here's a few from my side. My dad -- being the silly man that he is -- bought these two gingerbread houses with the intention of having a gingerbread house making contest.

Making gingerbread houses is VERY serious business.

And the finished products: 

Can you tell the little kids got ahold of them towards the end? Good times were had by all.  Again, no picture of this, but at Thanksgiving dinner, my grandmother (who's husband recently passed away and she moved into a house near my parents to be closer to us) made a very heart-felt speech about how grateful she was to have all of her family close to her.  It was really nice. 

december 6:

This one has been going on for awhile now, but I just had to show you a picture of it.  Most of you know that we live in a trailer court, which has been a ton of fun.  However, there are always jokes going around about how "ghetto" or "white trash" we are. Here is an example of that:

Yes. That is my washing machine. Completely jimmy-rigged to stay in the "on" position.  On any given day, this variation may change, but it's basically the same. Right now, the paperclip/tape contraption is hot glued in place until I feel well enough to go to a parts store.  The joys of being a poor college student.

It was also around this time that we started getting some really bad storms coming through our town, and so the route that hubby would take to get to school every day became very dangerous (imagine: high elevation canyon, dimly lit, icy, snowy, and wrecks galore...ugly).  So he went down to live with his mom for the remaining 2-3 weeks until he graduated.  Meanwhile, I was still stuck in town, without a car, during dead week/finals week.  It was an emotional time, we'll just put it like that.  I know lots of women go longer without their husbands than I did, but all the same, any extended time apart is hard.  I am truly impressed with those women that go months and months without their spouses.  That's incredible. Anyway, moving on.

december 10:

Every semester in ROTC, the older cadets are assigned to be mentors to the younger cadets, and this semester, I was assigned two fantastic girls that are about to enter their Field Training Preparation semester (boot camp prep), for the second time. For circumstances out of their control, they were both supposed to go to camp last summer, but couldn't.  So they have to do it AGAIN. So being the totally awesome mentor that I am, I made them these for next semester, to help remind them of their goals and the reasons they are doing this:

It was a fun little side project for me, and I hope they enjoyed it as well.

the rest of the days up to finals:

As you can probably see, I skipped a TON of days in the update above. Those days were spent primarily in the computer lab working on projects. Typically, I was gone 6:30 AM to at least 10 PM, Monday through Sunday.  There were even a few days where I stayed on campus until 2 AM.  It was a rough period and you can probably now see why I didn't do much blogging during that time.  I really felt like I was just jumping from one task to the next, with never a moment to rest.  A ten minute break to eat a snack was usually as much as I got.  In any case, it's over now, and I passed all my classes pretty darn well: all A's and B's.  So I guess that was worth it! :)